By Carly Gelsinger
I discovered the danger of my body on a packed bus in Timisoara, Romania. I stood with fifty American teens on a mission to share Jesus, and probably another fifty Romanians trying to make it to work on time. I could smell intense body odor from people reaching up to grip the arm handles. The bus driver swerved around tiny European cars down narrow cobblestone streets.
I was out to change the world.
I wore loose-fitting denim shorts and a camouflage print Christian T-shirt that said “God’s Army Girl.” My hair was pulled into a thin French braid on the back of my head. I felt warm drops of sweat on my cheeks from my thick-lensed glasses.
I thought I was so grown up, a missionary spreading the Gospel to the ends of the Earth, but really I wasn’t more than a little girl in braids.
I landed in Romania because I went to a teen conference six months earlier and checked a box on a brochure that said I was interested in going overseas to spread God’s word. I spent the following months scooping ice cream for seven dollars an hour and selling mistletoe bouquets during the holidays to raise money for this trip. I read the entry for Romania in the “R” book from my dad’s 1964 encyclopedia set, and studied the basics of their economy and government and customs. I counted down the days and prayed for the Lord to prepare the hearts of the lost in Romania.
I was prepared to do hard things for the Lord, but I wasn’t prepared for what happened next.
I was staring out the window, daydreaming about my dog back home when I felt something rough inside my underwear. It was moving around in circles, and it took me a second to realize that I was feeling somebody’s fingers. I whipped my head back to find a skinny middle-aged man with large black pupils reaching up my loose-fitting shorts and fondling me.
“Stop. That’s gross,” I said, stunned. I didn’t know how else to respond.
“Moolt,” the man said, as he pulled away, which is Romanian for thank-you. He slunk to another part of the bus and exited at the next stop.
Woozy and faint, I was unsure of what had just transpired, and I wasn’t sure I wanted to know.
The girls who were huddled around me on the noisy bus hadn’t noticed what happened. The bus kept speeding down narrow streets, and my hair was still in braids, and the Americans around me were still laughing and the Romanians were still trying to get to work on time. The world kept going around me, but something inside me had stopped.
The rest of the day played out like a dream. We got off the bus and passed out tracts to the peasants feeding pigeons in Timisoara’s town square. I prayed with a toothless woman in a headscarf to accept Jesus. I played tag with some street kids, who wanted their picture taken. They posed, giving each other bunny ears and flashing huge grins to show their gold teeth, as I snapped photos of them with my disposable camera.
That afternoon, we ate at McDonald’s. I ordered a Filet O’ Fish sandwich, which was crispier and more flavorful than McDonald’s fish sandwiches at home. I sat with outside with my teammates, eating my sandwich and Orange Fanta, shooing the pigeons away and watching Romanian teenagers sniff something from a paper bag.
It was a regular day for us in Romania, just like the last twenty before. Except for this day, I couldn’t shake the feeling of that man’s touch on my body. The scratchiness of the fingers, the roughness of his movements kept playing in my mind over and over again.
I had to tell someone.
I approached my female team leader Whitney in our dorm hallway that evening about the man who assaulted me, only I didn’t use those words. I told her someone made a move on me, and I explained that he put his hand inside my private part, careful not to be too graphic or inappropriate with my language. She fiddled with her lanyard necklace that held the whistle she blew at the group during the day. Although my voice quaked, I didn’t cry. It felt strange to hear myself talk about it, almost like I was telling someone else’s story.
“He came from nowhere, and then he was in my under pants,” I said.
“I’m sorry that happened to you,” Whitney said, but she didn’t look very sorry. She yawned and tossed her long brown hair behind her shoulders. At twenty-one, she was in charge of all the day-to-day operations of our trip, along with her 22-year-old male counterpart. They both seemed worn out all the time.
“I can’t stop thinking about what happened,” I said. Now I was starting to tear up. “He said moolt.”
“Well let’s not get too emotional about this. What were you wearing?” she asked.
“Khaki shorts,” I said.
“Shorts? Honey, you know you’re only allowed to wear shorts on non-ministry days,” she said.
“I know,” I said, feeling embarrassed. I realized I put myself in a tough spot by admitting I had broken the organization’s dress code. According to our handbook, repeated dress code violations could warrant getting sent home.
“So that man was wrong to touch you, but instead of dwelling on it, maybe we can use this as a good lesson on modesty. As sisters in Christ, we have to help our brothers to not stumble,” she said.
“OK,” I said. “You’re right.”
“If I had noticed you were wearing shorts earlier, I would have asked you to change. I take responsibility for that. But isn’t it amazing how God can use bad situations to teach us things? He is so good.”
“Yeah, very amazing,” I said, without feeling amazed at all.
“If you have any questions, don’t hesitate to talk to me. I’m here for you,” she said. She patted my knee, stood up, and said goodnight.
I lay in bed that night, trying to pray myself to sleep. I apologized to God for disobeying the dress code my leaders laid out for me, and asked God to help me forget what happened to me earlier that day. I fell asleep peacefully, but woke up in a sweat a few hours later from a dream where I was stuck on a bus in my khaki shorts, a legion of skinny men with dark pupils closing in on me.
The remainder of the trip, I glanced behind me often when on a bus. I crossed my legs, even when standing. And I never wore shorts.
I didn’t tell my parents or anyone back home about the incident on the Romanian bus. I showed them pictures of the cute street kids and talked about the people who accepted Jesus, and how good McDonald’s is in Europe, and all the things God taught me. The following year, I signed up to go to Romania again.
I buried the incident deep in the recesses of my mind in a dusty box marked failure because I never wanted to think about it again.
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Ten years later, I sat by the window at my kitchen table on a snowy day in Boston. I flipped through the Boston Globe and my eyes landed on a story about a man who was arrested for groping high school girls. It all came back—the sweaty bus, the rough hand, the fish sandwich, Whitney’s reaction, and the nightmares that followed.
“I think I was sexually assaulted as a teen,” I blurted to my husband Joe, who was reading the sports section next to me.
“You think you were assaulted?” he asked.
I told the whole story for the first time, for him, but also for myself.
“They blamed you for wearing shorts?” he said, curling his lip.
“Well, they didn’t really blame me,” I said, but paused as the weight of his words hit me. I buried my head in my hands over our wobbly unfinished pine IKEA table.
“Wow,” I said without lifting my head. “They did blame me.”
I punched the table and screamed. All these years I spent in misplaced shame for something that should have made me mad. But as I bucked beneath my overwhelming rage, I recognized it like family. The anger had always been there, I realized, deferred to rot and stink under the surface. Now it was released.
I didn’t get better instantly or magically after that day. But I learned to hush the voices that want to keep me bound to shame and silence. I began to dare to believe the Other Voice who whispers grace and hope into a fragile heart.
I am not done healing, but I am released to begin.
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Carly Gelsinger is the 2015 Faith & Culture Writing Contest Runner-Up in the non-fiction category. Find her writing at Carly Gelsinger website
